Favorite time of Year

I can't help it - I love clipping. Yes, it takes forever, you get hair literally everywhere (I found some in my teeth even!), but I think it's super fun.

I mentioned that I wanted to do something similar to what I did last time I clipped and I didn't realize how similar the clip was! Basically I did the same thing, with less hair on the neck, than last time so it's a modified blanket clip. I'm super happy with how it turned out!

So shinyy

Also, I've been wanting to buy some Snaks 5th Avenchew treats for a while now, so I finally ordered a cute Halloween cookie set and the unicorn crunch cups. You can give them to both dogs and horses and Kaida loves them! I've given her some of the crunch cups and she really likes them even though they're very hard and she had to figure out how to crunch them up with her soft mouth. 

Noms

 Jetta was a little less sure about her cookies, especially as they're pretty big. Once she figured out how to eat them she really liked them. They're just so adorable, I will definitely buy them again for special occasions (they're a little spendy), but they'd make perfect gifts.

A monster cookie for my monster pony

Fall (basically all of October) and Halloween have to be some of my favorites. Love this time of year <3

Decisions Decisions

So many decisions lately. A bunch of people have already been clipping their horses and I'm trying to decide when I should do Jetta. It's a little early for me to clip, but then again I have time this week before my schedule gets crazy... so that leaves the decision for what design do I want to do?

I miss her tail!

My favorite

I'm probably going to do something similar to the year before last (my favorite one). She didn't get done last year because of baby, but even if I don't ride her a whole lot this winter she just has too much hair. She's been getting pretty sweaty during our rides lately. She has a super dense winter coat, but there's not a whole lot of length. Still too much hair!

Baby horse hasn't been doing too many exciting things, though she did finally get some boots of her own! I had a pair of medium Veredus splint boots that are a hair too small for Jetta and I haven't been able to get anyone to buy them off me. They're the perfect size for Maisie so I decided to keep them. Then at WEG I looked at a bunch of different boots and decided I liked the Horseware Amigo Air Flow boots. I would've liked some Majyk Equipe boots but I needed to stay under $50 a pair and these were half that price. I'm trying really hard not to buy lots of things for her, especially ones that she will grow out of. I think at this point she has a handful of halters, a cob sized bridle that I used for Trask, a baby blanket, and now boots (one pair of which was a hand-me-down).

Ugly but free!

A friend that used to breed warmbloods gave me a blanket for her this spring. I measured her at around a 62-64" (I was being lazy and trying to measure a moving target). Luckily the blanket fits perfectly, unluckily it fits perfectly so she's going to grow out of it shortly. So now I need to hunt for a cheap blanket that will last the winter! I was thinking maybe a 68" or 70".

She could have cared less about the boots and took a couple funny steps before getting over it and walking a few laps around the round pen. Such a good baby!

Best baby

I made the decision not to go to the dressage show this weekend which is a bummer, especially since I am so ready to start showing at second level and this was going to be out debut. But, we need some more time to polish everything and I have other plans this weekend, so we'll have to wait until spring. The good news is that I really like the new second level tests for next year, so I'm excited to start riding them!

More Learnin'

Baby continues to learn about life, you know, the difficult stuff like fly spray and clipping and being caught.

She thankfully has improved since her vaccine reaction. She didn't really want to eat for a couple days and I was worried she just didn't like her new food. I gave her some probiotics and she bounced back a few days later and is now eating her new food! She is not food motivated in any way, so getting her to eat grain is difficult. I got her a ration balancer so she only needs to eat 2 pounds a day and she'll be set for everything she needs, but getting to 2 pounds might take a while. We finally moved up from 1/2 a pound twice a day, to one pound in a feeding so she's gradually learning to eat it!

She dropped a good amount of weight and looked terrible, but luckily gained it back. She still hasn't shed out her winter coat and it's been in the mid-80's a couple days here and she seemed uncomfortable and I was over it, so she got body clipped.

I usually think it's silly to body clip in the spring since they're going to shed anyways, but she was taking altogether way too long. All the other horses in the area were shed out except her. The surprise? She didn't care one bit about being clipped. She even let me do her bridle path and chin! She even stood super well for the whole thing since it took a while, letting the clippers cool off every few minutes. I'm kinda bummed - I got these fancy brushless motor clippers by Wahl thinking they'd be cooler but they get WAY hotter than my last pair of clippers.

Before clipping

So much hair!

Anyways, I was impressed by the clipping. I didn't attempt doing her muzzle since I know that's a really ticklish area and we did plenty for one day. But we have found her new nemesis: fly spray. She does not like it one bit and dances around, bolts and just generally hates it. So I bought a spray bottle and now we get to practice with water every day after she eats her food! Very unhappy baby, she would like you to know she is being cruelly mistreated over here.

Naked!!

She is 9 months old now and just hit 14 hands at the shoulder! She weighs a little under 600 pounds. We are getting better at being caught (she tends to walk towards me now in the pasture instead of immediately walking away), she is a pro at tying and loading in the trailer. She hates fly spray, clippers are acceptable, treats are still very meh. We need to continue working on trailering away from home, tying in the cross ties, and our new adventures will include ponying and a bath as soon as I have time!

That's pretty much a complete update on little Miss Maisie.

Jetta continues much the same. Our trot work seems fairly good and we had a great ride yesterday. The canter continues to be a mystery as to why on earth we seem to be flailing around. I waffle back and forth on "it's all me" to "my horse is being a resistant idiot" and I'm pretty sure it's 50/50. We are playing around with different exercises, stirrup lengths, and bits or lack of bits to try and find SOMETHING that works. I'm pretty bummed that this is the place in our current training that I'll be taking her to see the clinician this weekend since I'd love to work on stuff more towards preparing us for 2nd level, vs. "how to canter" like we haven't been doing it forever. But oh well, at least she keeps me humble!

At least our outfits are matchy

She's getting pudgy! We just cut her grain back finally

She's lucky she's pretty

Wahl KM10 Clipper Reveiw

This post has been sitting for a while, but I never got around to finishing it... since it's finals week and I'm procrastinating, I finally got around to it!

I've finally been able to really test out these clippers that I've had for the past year+ so I thought it was time to do a review!

I got these clippers the Christmas before last after my very trusty Laube Speed Feed clippers died. I loved these very small, quiet clippers, but the motor was starting to have a hard time cutting anything and I was tired of buying replacement blades (since you couldn't get the blades sharpened) and the batteries no longer held much of a charge.

I decided that I wanted clippers with a cord so I didn't need to deal with batteries anymore, plus standard blades so I could get the blades sharpened. I needed something quiet and not too hefty, that would do face and leg trimming regularly, plus a body clip once or twice a year.

Initially I was planning on the Lister Star clippers but once I held them in person I realized that they were just way too big for me.

The Wahl KM10's had just recently come out and I got to see them in person at a trade show. They were the perfect size and quiet. I researched it a lot and at the time couldn't find a ton of reviews, but they sounded pretty neat - a brushless motor that would supposedly last a lot longer than regular motors, in addition to making said motor run quieter and cooler.

Perfect size

It has a nice long cord - 14 feet which was great because of the barn's oddly placed outlets. Our outlets are at the ceiling basically, since the one outlet by the crossties in the tack room no longer works. And it has a 5 year warranty which is pretty awesome! It doesn't hurt that they come in turquoise either!

Basically, I love this clipper. It is very quiet (though not as quiet as my Laube clippers). It's extremely light weight which I love and small for my small hands. It did awesome with Jetta's body clip. While it did get hot, I would oil it every 10 minutes and let it rest for a few seconds and it cooled down quickly and I could get right back to work.

Besides the body clip, I've used it about once a month to trim Jetta's bridle path and chin whiskers, in addition to roaching her mane every couple of months. It does a great job, especially with Jetta's super thick mane - it buzzes through just like butter!

Makes quick work of that mane

I've been storing it at home since it was at the barn for the last few months and started to get a small amount of rust, which I do for most of my things since the barn is just so ridiculously damp. But I forsee these clippers having a long productive life!

Weekly update

Well, I'm going to try and do a weekly update, we'll see if I can stick with it!

Saturday the 29th - I went to a horse show to watch my roommate ride. She took her two babies (3.5 year olds) to their first show and also her niece and pony. That pony was seriously the cutest thing ever. It was like a model Breyer pony. I had fun helping out and I was kinda glad I decided on not taking Jetta - not only were we not really prepared, the warm-up was absolutely awful and it was hectic enough already with two young horses and a pony!

Look at it's itty bitty dressage bridle!

That perfect little face!

Sunday the 30th - Jetta got her hooves soaked and I ended up cleaning her stall while I waited since I was bored (she's on full care). I love how Jetta doesn't care about having plastic bags strapped to her feet even if she does think they smell funny.

This smells funny...

The manure hill of death... uphill on slick rubber mats. Let the games begin

How 90% of the pitchforks look now

Tuesday the 1st - I went to this super awesome dinner talk put on by the NW Equine Practitioners Association. They do continuing education (CE) talks for veterinarians and it's free for students to go to. A lot of the veterinarians I know were there so it was nice to catch up, get a free catered dinner (and alcohol!) and learn about Bisphosphonates in treating Navicular Syndrome, specifically Osphos. I highly recommend you read up on it if you're interested! A lot of neat research has been done and hopefully more to come in the near future!

Wednesday the 2nd - It was actually sunny when I got out of class and when I got to the barn the arena was full... so we ran away and hit the trails! I've been wanting to go really badly for the last couple weeks but never made it out. It was GORGEOUS. It was no longer sunny by the time we got to the trailhead, but it was still absolutely beautiful with all the fall foliage. We barely saw anyone and when we got to the top of the hill, the view was breathtaking. I'm a little bummed my phone died, but we spent a good 20 minutes soaking up the view (well, Jetta grazed). It was so clear you could see 3 different mountains in the distance and the sun was starting to set, casting a pink glow on them. Gorgeous.

We also got to test out Jetta's new "trail bridle" set up. It's a beta bridle in our color with rope reins and the second waterford bit I bought her. It works perfectly and it'll be nice that I can just hose it down when it gets all sweaty!

Thursday the 3rd - we had a short ride in the arena, nothing fancy but she was fairly good, she looked pretty fancy on the lunge line!

Saturday the 4th - I rode MS's horse Dundee. It's so fun to get to ride other horses, Dundee is so different from Jetta. He's got a HUGE, bouncy warmblood stride. He's pretty lazy but not too bad. He's doing rehab right now so he just started being able to canter a little bit. He was FRESH. For him at least. I had a fun time riding him even when he decided to take off in the canter the first time I asked for it. For the most part he's a really chill guy, plus adorable.

Jetta got a haircut. I was at a loss for what kind of clip I wanted to do this year. I usually really like doing a blanket clip on her, but I wanted to take off less hair this winter and then I saw what SprinklerBandits did to Courage... so we tried to copy. I don't think it turned out as nice as hers, but I think I like it.



Then today, Tuesday the 6th - Jetta just got lunged today while I was on my lunch break from school. I forgot my clippers since I wanted to fix up some of the lines on her clip job, but I guess that'll happen tomorrow. But we got a neat surprise... Chester's back!! I love this little pony. He's the sweetest little guy and he and Jetta love each other and they look like copies almost, one's just miniature!

That little nose!

Best friends

 So now you're all caught up!

What Did I Do

I've been considering this for a while and for some reason today, I just decided to go with it.

I've always liked the look of a roached mane and have kind of wanted to do it to Jetta for a long time but always thought that I'd never actually do it. I was too chicken.

For some reason, I just threw all those reasons out the window and shaved it all off today. I hate keeping it pulled, Jetta hates having it pulled, I'm probably not going to show that much this summer, it will keep her cool on our trail rides and I think she'll rock the mohawk.

Mid-way through the cut I kind of had a panicked "what am I doing?!" moment, but now that it's done, I actually really like it.

Dressagin'

Finally had a dressage lesson, it's been way too long! I can't even remember when we had the last one, probably sometime this past spring? I never got around to hauling out for a dressage lesson over the summer, though I definitely meant to.

I feel like at this point in Jetta's training, we've reached a plateau where she's as far as I can take her. There's a lot of little things we can work on, especially to get her back to how well she was going over the summer, and I can start teaching her the second level movements and building the basics for third level. But that's as far as I can get in dressage with her without some outside help. And if I want to make things really correct and improve our scores at first/second level, then we need a trainer's help.

Anyways, the lesson. I of course thought that it would be a wonderful idea to take the first lesson spot at 7:30am (I was organizing this clinic for the dressage team). I also thought it would be a good idea to commit to volunteering at 9:30am. So I woke up at a gastly time of 4am to drive to the barn, grab the horses and then pick up the girl that would be riding Misty and get to the barn for our lesson. I ended up planning everything perfectly, but geez it was awful. Not to mention, why on earth are there no coffee shops/gas stations open at 4am?! I needed my caffeine badly...

This is what it looked like when I got there for my lesson. Sunshine where are you??

Add in that it was absolutely freezing, a whopping 21 degrees when we pulled into the barn. Having Jetta and Misty together there was interesting... I haven't trailered them together to an event at all and they've gotten pretty attached since they're now pasturing together. Thus, Jetta was not on her best behavior. With not riding her a ton, I knew she wasn't going to be great. But she was also really tense because she was worrying about where Misty was the whole ride.

That said though, she wasn't completely awful. We had a lot of good moments, showed some clear improvements from our last lesson with KB and she tried.

What we worked on:

• Leg yielding on a circle to get her paying attention to me as a warm up when she was really worrying about Misty.
• Leg yielding up the center line, getting her to lower her neck, which is a huge issue for us right now. She has improved a ton since our last lesson, where we also worked on leg yields. She now moves nicely off my leg and doesn't over bend. She's a touch too leading with her haunches, but I'll take it over being sluggish off my leg. Now we just need to work on the neck. KB had me half halt with the outside rein (the theme of our lesson). "Outside rein controls the position of the neck". If Jetta popped her head up, we did a 10m circle and asked for her to lower her neck and tried again. Worked. Like. MAGIC.
• Cantering, we worked on our shallow serpentine. Turns out, while you're required to show bend in the direction of your lead, I'm asking for too much bend which is throwing her off balance (which is why she rushes in the second half) so I need to ask for her to stay straighter in the neck. Big improvement. 
• Lengthen trots. Our homework for improving that is to play around with getting her biggest possible trot on a circle, then coming back to a smaller trot, then bigger again. All while asking her to lift the front and and not fall on her forehand. KB said most horses will "discover" their lengthened trot off of this exercise, so we'll see. She said we're going in the right direction for the moment though. 
• Another tip for the canter was my seat. I have a driving seat, always have and I can't get rid of it. Even if there's some magical way to quiet my seat, I just can't make it work. But instead of making my driving seat quiet and non-existent, KB had me just sit deeper and drive Jetta into longer strides, instead of the short strides that my seat was previously asking for. Also magic improvement.
• Shoulder-ins were good, KB said I was doing a good job teaching/working on those. Sometimes we get a little bit too much angle and sometimes we drift, but we'll work on that. 

Overall, it was a good lesson. I was disappointed that Jetta didn't behave herself (lots of gnashing on the bit and pulling and rushing, etc) but it wasn't a total loss and we got some great exercises. KB said her gaits are looking nicer than last time (when she was behaving herself anyways) and that she's developed some nice upper neck muscles, despite still bracing the underside of her neck.

Then Misty was next! Another girl on the team rode her. She's not a super advanced rider, but she's not a beginner. Misty was okay for her. She tested her a bit and they struggled with some things that I don't have an issue with, but it was just because they didn't know eachother and KF (the girl riding) had no experience with green horses.

I told KB that Misty was just green in the area of dressage, mainly just because of the contact. What I'd been working on with her was just pushing her forward into contact, getting her more round especially through transitions and working on a nice forward, even tempo. So that's what they worked on again, it was nice to see that she did some of the same things I'd been doing with her.

• She had  KF start out with a light contact. Misty was being kind of obnoxious and flipping her head/dropping contact, so eventually she had her pick up more contact and if she flipped her head, she'd bend her to the inside to make her stop.
• When they moved into the trot she had KF really push Misty forward into a really fast trot, just to get her out of the habit of her lazy trot. Misty's auto-trot speed is between a dressage trot and a jog. It's still got nice impulsion and it's pretty, but it's not as fancy as it could be. KF really struggled getting Misty to move forward, which I don't have a problem with, but I think that was just a bit of Misty testing her and KF not knowing exactly how to ask. Misty has some really great looking moments when she was moving out and carrying herself nicely with just the minimum of contact.
• Cantering was lovely, though KF had trouble asking for it just because she doesn't have a completely independent hand/seat connection. So she'd ask for it and Misty would go to canter but she'd get caught in the mouth a little and it would be a little bit awkward transition. Once they got into it though, it looked very nice. 
• Transitions, she had some nice improvement. KB had KF sit deeper and ask, instead of letting her hips go with the motion, that way they were able to eliminate the little baby trot steps that happen in the trot to walk transition, mainly going off the seat instead of the reins so that she wouldn't brace. 

Overall, Misty was really good and I really enjoyed watching her go. Plus, KB LOVED her which was awesome. I love it when other people also love your horse :) She really liked her movement and said that she was going to make a nice dressage prospect! So that was awesome. 

I totally meant to take pictures of Misty getting ridden, but it was so freezing (it warmed up to a balmy 23 degrees at the time), that I didn't want to take my hands out of my pockets, even though I was wearing gloves, and I just chatted with KB while I watched. I love getting to talk training theory with someone who knows what they're doing! It's awesome. So we discussed how to teach the flying changes which was really interesting and now I have a lot to mull over in that department.

After we finished up the lessons, I stuck them in their stalls, dropped KF back at her house and went and did my volunteer project for an hour and a half, then picked the ponies back up and went home. I got home at around 12:30, but it seriously felt like 4pm I was so wiped out. Turned Misty out and got to work clipping Jetta. I've been meaning to do it forever, but I finally got my new blades and having a jumping lesson on Sunday was the perfect motivation to get it over with.

I was going to do the same clip as last year, a blanket clip, but got impatient, so I didn't end up clipping a small amount on her flank/hip, but I don't think it will matter that much since she's really only getting ridden 2-3 times a week. But it will make cooling out SO much better. I love having a clipped horse.

Jetta was great for it. I tied her up to do her neck so she couldn't graze. She loved having her chest area and her throatlatch done. Her eyes got half closed and she stayed very still. Then whenever I stopped she'd wake up and fidget. I untied her to do her belly so she could graze. She also loves having her belly done. She'll stop grazing and her lips will wiggle. I'm so glad she loves it! It makes it that much easier. I definitely didn't do my best clip job because I was super impatient. I just eyeballed the whole thing and got it to be relatively even and straight. As long as it wasn't super embarrassing and it was functional, I couldn't care less!

Half naked pony. Now all we need to do is get her mane under control and she'll be looking good!